Do you have Excel? Chances are that you’re regularly tapping into this program. Considering that, homeowners can use Excel to help manage their household spending plan. It’s a great tool for figuring out whether household expenses or revenues are on the rise. At work, you can use Excel to determine which of the company’s sales representatives are wrapping up the most sales and which are slumping. This enables you to make measures needed to ensure that your company’s products and services are selling as briskly as they can. The chances, though, are high that you aren’t using Excel to its full potential. That’s unfortunate. There is great, though: Knowing Excel doesn’t require a PhD. Simply follow three easy steps to help make Excel work even harder for you.
Adding non-contiguous values
Excel’s AutoSum option is an exceptionally useful tool. It lets users rapidly add rows of numbers together to calculate a single sum. Way too many users, though, don’t know how to use AutoSum to incorporate values that are not contiguous, or adjacent, to each other. Fortunately, this isn’t as complicated as users may think. The TechRebpublic blog recently illustrated how users can use AutoSum to add non-contiguous sums. The task involves picking one column of numbers and holding the computer’s “Control” key to pick a second column. Users can then use AutoSum to determine the sums of both columns, even when they may not be located adjacent to each other.
Preventing bad data entry
Too many Excel users attempt to enter bad data in their spreadsheets. For instance, maybe personnel are expected to enter only whole numbers in your company’s quarterly sales spreadsheet. This, unfortunately, does not mean that some employees might make an effort to enter numbers containing decimals. Fortunately, as PC Magazine wrote in a recent story, Excel incorporates a nifty feature intended to prevent individuals from entering the wrong kind of information within a company spreadsheet. It’s known as Data Validation. To find this feature, click on the “Table Tools” tab. Next, click “Data Validation.” Then you’re able to enter exactly what kind of data the workers can enter. For instance, you could tell Excel to allow only numbers and not text in a spreadsheet.
Don’t let unsaved files ruin your day
We all get that sinking feeling when our pcs shut down while we’re working on an Excel file that we never saved. Fortunately, with newer versions of Excel, there is no reason for that feeling. That’s because Excel permits you to easily recover documents which you thought you lost. To recover these important files, select the “File” tab in Excel. Then click “Recover Unsaved Documents.” After that, you only need to select the “lost” document once it shows up on your screen. This technique works for Excel files that you never even gave a name.